“All will be well with us yet,” wrote Mrs. Ward to her husband three months before their move, “and if God is good to us there are coming years of work indeed, but of less burden and strain. All depends on you and me, and though I know the very thought depresses us sometimes, it ought not to, for we have many good gifts within and without, and a fair field, if not the fairest possible field to use them in. It seems to me that all I want to be happy is to keep my own heart and conscience clear, and to feel my way open into the presence of God and the unseen. And surely to seek is to find.”
“All will be well with us yet,” wrote Mrs. Ward to her husband three months before their move, “and if God is good to us there are coming years of work indeed, but of less burden and strain. All depends on you and me, and though I know the very thought depresses us sometimes, it ought not to, for we have many good gifts within and without, and a fair field, if not the fairest possible field to use them in. It seems to me that all I want to be happy is to keep my own heart and conscience clear, and to feel my way open into the presence of God and the unseen. And surely to seek is to find.”
Years of less burden and strain! She had, indeed, forgotten the spirit within, which was to drive her on to ever new and greater efforts in the more stimulating atmosphere of London. Though her work for theDictionary of Christian Biographywas almost over, she had by this time made the acquaintance of Mr. Morley, then editor of thePall Mall Gazette, and was doing much reviewing of French and Spanish books for him, while she continued to write weekly articles for the ChurchGuardianand theOxford Chronicle. Nor were the authorities ofThe Timeslong in finding out that she too could write, and by the autumn of 1882 many foreign books reached her for review from Printing House Square. She complains in her letters that she cannot get through them quickly enough. “Three or four volumes of these books a week is about all I can do, and that seems to go no way.” The inevitable expenses of London life did in fact weigh upon her heavily within a year of their migration, and the sense of “burden and strain” was never long absent. But she could not have lived otherwise. It was her fundamental instinct to work herself to the bone and then to share her good times with others less fortunate, and since this process made away with her earnings she would work herselfto the bone again. In this atmosphere of unremitting toil interruptions were of course discouraged, but when they occurred in spite of all defences she never showed the irritation which so frequently accompanies overwork. And in the many interruptions caused by the childish illnesses of her small family her tenderness and devotion were beyond all words. How she dosed us with aconite and belladonna, watching over us and compelling us to throw off our fevers and colds! Nor was anything allowed to interfere with the befriending of all members of the family who wished to come to Russell Square. Her brother Willie, who had by this time been appointed to the staff of theManchester Guardian, was a frequent visitor, renewing with each appearance his literarycamaraderiewith her and delighting in the friends whom she would ask to meet him. Matthew Arnold, too, was sometimes to be caught for an evening—great occasions, those, for Mrs. Ward’s relations with him were already of the most affectionate. He influenced her profoundly in literary and critical matters, for she imbibed from him both her respect for German thoroughness and her passion for French perfection. These, indeed, were the years when she saw most of “Uncle Matt,” for Pains’ Hill Cottage, at Cobham, was not too far away for a Sunday visit, so that she and Mr. Ward would sometimes fly down there for an afternoon of talk. Usually, however, she would return full of blasphemies about his precious dogs, who had diverted their master’s attention all through the walk and prevented the flow of his wit and wisdom. Therefore she preferred to get him safely to herself at Russell Square!
Her two younger sisters, Julia and Ethel, were constantly in the house, the elder of whom married in 1885 Mr. Leonard Huxley, and so brought about a happy connection with the Professor and his wife, which gave Mrs. Ward much joy for many years. Nor were her neighbours neglected. When Christmas came round there was always a wonderfulWeihnachtsbaum, dressed with loving care by the good German governess, and by any uncles and aunts who were within reach, and attended not only by all possible relations and friends (including especially and always Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Thursfield and their children), but also by the choirboys of St. John’s Church and by many oftheirrelations too. But behind all this eager hospitality lay a far deeperlonging. Her mother had, early in 1881, undergone a second operation for cancer, and though this gave her a year’s immunity from pain the malady returned. In March, 1882, she wrote to her daughter with stoical courage that she foresaw what was in store for her—“a hard ending to a hard life.” Though she was devotedly nursed by her youngest daughter, Ethel, her suffering overshadowed the next six years of Mary’s life like a cloud, but it became also Mrs. Ward’s keenest joy to be able to help her and to ease her path. Once when she herself had been ill and suffering, she wrote her a few lines which reveal her own inmost thoughts on the relation between pain and faith:
“I amsosorry, dearest, for your own suffering. This is a weary world,—but there is good behind it, ‘a holy will,’ as Amiel says, ‘at the root of nature and destiny,’ and submission brings peace because in submission the heart finds God and in God its rest. There is no truth I believe in more profoundly.”
“I amsosorry, dearest, for your own suffering. This is a weary world,—but there is good behind it, ‘a holy will,’ as Amiel says, ‘at the root of nature and destiny,’ and submission brings peace because in submission the heart finds God and in God its rest. There is no truth I believe in more profoundly.”
Yet in spite of the unceasing round of work, what compensations there were in the London life! The making of new friends can never fail to be a delightful process, and it very soon became apparent that Mrs. Ward was to be adopted to the heart of that London world which thought about books and politics and which incidentally was making history. London was smaller then than now, and if a new-comer had brains and modesty, and above all a gift of sympathy that won all hearts, there were few doors that did not open to her or him in time. Her connection with the Forsters and with “Uncle Matt” brought her many friends to start with, while Mr. Ward’s work onThe Timestook them naturally both into the world of painters (for after 1884 he joined art criticism to his political and other writing) and into the world of affairs. A letter written to Mrs. A. H. Johnson in May, 1885, gives a typical picture of the social side of her life three years after the move to London. The occasion is the marriage of Alfred Lyttelton and Laura Tennant:
‘The wedding function yesterday was very interesting. I am glad not to have missed Gladstone’s speech at the breakfast. What a wondrous man it is! The intensity, the feeling of the speech were extraordinary.... Life has been rather exciting lately in the way of new friends,the latest acquisition being Mr. Goschen, to whom I have quite lost my heart! There is a pliancy and a brilliancy about him which make him one of the most delightful companions. We dined there last Saturday and I have seldom had so much interesting talk. Lord Arthur Russell, who sat next me, told me stories of how, as a child at Geneva, he had met folk who in their youth had seen Rousseau and known Voltaire, and had been intimate friends of Mme. de Stael in middle life. And then, coming a little further down the stream of time, he could describe to me having stayed at Lamartine’s château in the poet’s old age, and so on. Mr. Goschen is busy on a life of his grandfather, who was the publisher of Goethe, Schiller and Wieland, and whose correspondence, which he is now going through, covers the whole almost of the German literary period,—so that after dinner the scene shifted to Germany, and we talked away with an occasional raid into politics, till, to my great regret, the evening was over.”
‘The wedding function yesterday was very interesting. I am glad not to have missed Gladstone’s speech at the breakfast. What a wondrous man it is! The intensity, the feeling of the speech were extraordinary.... Life has been rather exciting lately in the way of new friends,the latest acquisition being Mr. Goschen, to whom I have quite lost my heart! There is a pliancy and a brilliancy about him which make him one of the most delightful companions. We dined there last Saturday and I have seldom had so much interesting talk. Lord Arthur Russell, who sat next me, told me stories of how, as a child at Geneva, he had met folk who in their youth had seen Rousseau and known Voltaire, and had been intimate friends of Mme. de Stael in middle life. And then, coming a little further down the stream of time, he could describe to me having stayed at Lamartine’s château in the poet’s old age, and so on. Mr. Goschen is busy on a life of his grandfather, who was the publisher of Goethe, Schiller and Wieland, and whose correspondence, which he is now going through, covers the whole almost of the German literary period,—so that after dinner the scene shifted to Germany, and we talked away with an occasional raid into politics, till, to my great regret, the evening was over.”
Her own little dinner-parties very soon began to make their mark, while not long after their establishment in London, she began the practice of being at home on Thursday afternoons, and though at first her natural shyness and lack of small talk made her openings somewhat formidable, she soon warmed to the task, till within a very few months her Thursdays became a much-appreciated institution. Men, as well as women, came to them, for they always liked to make her talk and to hear her eager views on all the topics of the day, from Irish coercion to the literary personalities of France, or the need for prodding the Universities to open their examinations to women. She still called herself a good Radical in these days, but her devotion to Mr. Forster—whom she had visited in Dublin during his Chief Secretaryship—gave the first reservations to her Liberal faith, for she took his part in the matter of his resignation, and felt that he had not been sufficiently supported by the Cabinet. It was a great grief to her that Mr. Morley, in thePall Mall Gazette, found it necessary to attack Mr. Forster’s Irish administration with such persistent energy, and once, towards the end of 1882, she summoned up the courage to write him a remonstrance in good set terms. Mr. Morley’s reply is characteristic:
Dec. 13, 82.DEARMRS. WARD,—I have got your letter at last, and carefully read and digested it. Need I say that its frank and direct vigour only increases my respect for the writer? To answer it, as it deserves, is hardly possible for me. It would take a day for me to set forth, with proper reference to chapter and verse, all the reasons why I could not follow Mr. Forster in his Irish administration. They were set forth from time to time with almost tiresome iteration as events moved forward.In all that you say about Mr. Forster’s unselfishness, his industry, his strenuous desire to do what was right and best, nobody agrees more cordially than I do. Personally I have always had—if it is not impertinent in me to say so—a great liking for him. He was always very kind and obliging to me, and nothing has been more painful to me than to know that I was writing what would wound a family for whom I have such sincere respect as I have for his. But the occasion was grave. I have been thinking about Ireland all my life, and that fashion of governing it is odious and intolerable. If Sir Charles Dilke or Mr. Chamberlain had been Chief Secretary, and carried out the Coercion Act as Mr. Forster carried it out, I could not have attacked either of them, but I should have resigned my editorship rather than have connived by silence or otherwise at such mischief.I may at times have seemed bitter and personal in my language about Mr. Forster. One falls into this tone too readily, when fighting a battle day after day, and writing without time for calm revision. For that I am sorry, if it has been so, or seemed so. Mr. Forster’s friends—some of them—have been extremely unscrupulous in their personalities against me, their charges of intrigue, conspiracy. All that I do not care for one jot; my real regret, and it is a very sincere one, is that I should seem unjust or vindictive to people like you, who think honestly and calmly about politics, and other things.I hope that it is over, and that I shall never have to say a word about Mr. Forster’s Irish policy again.Yours very sincerely,JOHNMORLEY.
Dec. 13, 82.
DEARMRS. WARD,—
I have got your letter at last, and carefully read and digested it. Need I say that its frank and direct vigour only increases my respect for the writer? To answer it, as it deserves, is hardly possible for me. It would take a day for me to set forth, with proper reference to chapter and verse, all the reasons why I could not follow Mr. Forster in his Irish administration. They were set forth from time to time with almost tiresome iteration as events moved forward.
In all that you say about Mr. Forster’s unselfishness, his industry, his strenuous desire to do what was right and best, nobody agrees more cordially than I do. Personally I have always had—if it is not impertinent in me to say so—a great liking for him. He was always very kind and obliging to me, and nothing has been more painful to me than to know that I was writing what would wound a family for whom I have such sincere respect as I have for his. But the occasion was grave. I have been thinking about Ireland all my life, and that fashion of governing it is odious and intolerable. If Sir Charles Dilke or Mr. Chamberlain had been Chief Secretary, and carried out the Coercion Act as Mr. Forster carried it out, I could not have attacked either of them, but I should have resigned my editorship rather than have connived by silence or otherwise at such mischief.
I may at times have seemed bitter and personal in my language about Mr. Forster. One falls into this tone too readily, when fighting a battle day after day, and writing without time for calm revision. For that I am sorry, if it has been so, or seemed so. Mr. Forster’s friends—some of them—have been extremely unscrupulous in their personalities against me, their charges of intrigue, conspiracy. All that I do not care for one jot; my real regret, and it is a very sincere one, is that I should seem unjust or vindictive to people like you, who think honestly and calmly about politics, and other things.
I hope that it is over, and that I shall never have to say a word about Mr. Forster’s Irish policy again.
Yours very sincerely,JOHNMORLEY.
Such a letter only served to strengthen friendship. Mrs. Ward’s literary comradeship with Mr. Morley remained unbroken in spite of widening differences in politics, and when, a few months later, he assumed the editorship ofMacmillan’s Magazinehe proposed to her that she should virtually take over its literary criticism:—
March 22, 83.DEARMRS. WARD,—My reign over “Macmillan” will begin in May. I want to know whether you can help me to a literary article once a month—in the shape of acompte renduof some new books, English or French. It is highly desirable that the subject should be as lively and readable as possible—not erudite and academic, but literary, or socio-literary, as SteBeuve was.I don’t see why a “causerie” from you once a month should not become as marked a feature in our world, as SteBeuve was to France. In time, the articles would make matter for a volume, and so you would strike the stars with your sublime head.I hope my suggestion will commend itself to you. I have been counting upon you, and shall be horribly discouraged if you say No.Yours sincerely,JOHNMORLEY.
March 22, 83.
DEARMRS. WARD,—
My reign over “Macmillan” will begin in May. I want to know whether you can help me to a literary article once a month—in the shape of acompte renduof some new books, English or French. It is highly desirable that the subject should be as lively and readable as possible—not erudite and academic, but literary, or socio-literary, as SteBeuve was.
I don’t see why a “causerie” from you once a month should not become as marked a feature in our world, as SteBeuve was to France. In time, the articles would make matter for a volume, and so you would strike the stars with your sublime head.
I hope my suggestion will commend itself to you. I have been counting upon you, and shall be horribly discouraged if you say No.
Yours sincerely,JOHNMORLEY.
Flattered as she was by the suggestion, she was never able to carry out his whole behest, yet between February, 1883, and June, 1885, she wrote no less than twelve articles forMacmillan’s, on subjects ranging from the young Spanish Romanticist, Gustavo Becquer, to Keats, Jane Austen, Renan and the “Literature of Introspection” (à propos of Amiel’sJournal Intime), while the series was ended by a full-dress review of Pater’sMarius the Epicurean. These articles did much to assure her position in the world of pure literature, as her Dictionary articles had assured it in the world of scholarship, and she never ceased to be grateful to Mr. Morley for the opportunities he had given her in inviting them, for the encouragement of his praise and the bracing of his occasional criticism.
But these articles were all written under the heaviestphysical disabilities. Early in 1883 she began to suffer from a violent form of writer’s cramp, which made her right hand almost useless at times, and recurred at intervals all through her life, so that writing was usually a far more arduous and painful process to her than it is to most of us. Through the years 1883 and 1884 she was frequently reduced to writing with her left hand, but she also dictated much to her young sister-in-law, Gertrude Ward, who came to live with us at this time, and became for the next eight years the prop and support of our household. Many remedies were tried for the ailment, but nothing was really effective until after two years a German “writing-master” came on the scene, one Dr. Julius Wolff, who completely transformed her method of writing by making her sit much higher than before, rest the whole fore-arm on the table, and use an altogether different set of muscles. Many curious exercises he gave her also, which she practised at intervals for years afterwards, and by these means he succeeded in giving her comparative immunity, though whenever she was specially pressed with work the pain and weakness would recur. During the year 1884, however, before Dr. Wolff had appeared, her arm was practically disabled, and she wore it much in a sling.
Yet it was during this year that she began her translation of Amiel’sJournaland wrote her first novel,Miss Bretherton. The idea of it was suggested by her first sight of the beautiful actress, Mary Anderson, though she always maintained that, once created, Isabel Bretherton became to her an absolutely distinct personality. The manner of its writing is told in a fragment of Miss Gertrude Ward’s journal:
“The book was written in about six weeks. She used to lie or sit out of doors at Borough Farm, with a notebook and pencil, and scrawl down what she could with her left hand; then she would come in about twelve and dictate to me at a great rate for an hour or more. In the afternoon and evening she would look over and correct what was done, and I copied out the whole. The scene of Marie and Kendal in his rooms was dictated in her bedroom; she lay on her bed, and I sat by the window behind a screen.”
“The book was written in about six weeks. She used to lie or sit out of doors at Borough Farm, with a notebook and pencil, and scrawl down what she could with her left hand; then she would come in about twelve and dictate to me at a great rate for an hour or more. In the afternoon and evening she would look over and correct what was done, and I copied out the whole. The scene of Marie and Kendal in his rooms was dictated in her bedroom; she lay on her bed, and I sat by the window behind a screen.”
The book was published by Messrs. Macmillan andappeared in December, 1884. It attracted a good deal of attention. The general verdict was that it was a fine and delicate piece of work, but on too limited, too intellectual a scale. This view was admirably put by her old friend, Mr. Creighton (then Emmanuel Professor at Cambridge):
MYDEARMRS. WARD,—I have readMiss Brethertonwith much interest. It was hardly fair on the book to know the plot beforehand, but I found myself carried away by the delicate feeling with which the development of character was traced. The Nuneham scene, the death-bed and the final reconciliation were really touching and powerfully worked out.Borough Farm.Borough Farm.At the same time it is not a novel of my sort. I demand that I should have given me an entire slice of life, and that I should see the mutual interaction of a number of characters. Your interest centres entirely on one character: your characters all move in the same region of ideas, and that a narrow one. Your book is dainty, but it does not touch the great springs of life. Of course you didn’t mean it to do so: but I am putting before you what I conceive to be the novelist’s ideal. It seems to me that a novelist must have seen much, must lay himself out to be conversant with many sides of life, must have no line of his own, but must lend himself to the life of those around him. This is the direct opposite of the critic. I wonder if the two trades can be combined. Have you ever read Sainte Beuve’s solitary novel,Volupté? It is instructive reading. You are a critic in your novel. Your object is really to show how criticism can affect a nature capable of receiving it. Now is this properly a subject of art? Is it not too didactic? It is not so for me, for I am an old-fashioned moralist: but the mass of people do not care for intellectual teaching in novels. They want an emotional thrill. Remember that you have deliberately put this aside. Kendal’s love is not made to affect his life, his character, his work. Miss Bretherton only feels so far attracted to him as to listen to what he says.... I only say this to show you what the book made me think, that you wrote as a critic not as a creator. You threw into the form of a story many critical judgments, and gave an excellent sketch of thepossible worth of criticism in an unregenerate world. This was worth doing once: but if you are going on with novels you must throw criticism to the winds and let yourself go as a partner of common joys, common sorrows and common perplexities. There, I have told you what I think just as I think it. I would not have done so to anyone else save you, to whom I am always,Your most affectionate,M. CREIGHTON.
MYDEARMRS. WARD,—
I have readMiss Brethertonwith much interest. It was hardly fair on the book to know the plot beforehand, but I found myself carried away by the delicate feeling with which the development of character was traced. The Nuneham scene, the death-bed and the final reconciliation were really touching and powerfully worked out.
Borough Farm.Borough Farm.
At the same time it is not a novel of my sort. I demand that I should have given me an entire slice of life, and that I should see the mutual interaction of a number of characters. Your interest centres entirely on one character: your characters all move in the same region of ideas, and that a narrow one. Your book is dainty, but it does not touch the great springs of life. Of course you didn’t mean it to do so: but I am putting before you what I conceive to be the novelist’s ideal. It seems to me that a novelist must have seen much, must lay himself out to be conversant with many sides of life, must have no line of his own, but must lend himself to the life of those around him. This is the direct opposite of the critic. I wonder if the two trades can be combined. Have you ever read Sainte Beuve’s solitary novel,Volupté? It is instructive reading. You are a critic in your novel. Your object is really to show how criticism can affect a nature capable of receiving it. Now is this properly a subject of art? Is it not too didactic? It is not so for me, for I am an old-fashioned moralist: but the mass of people do not care for intellectual teaching in novels. They want an emotional thrill. Remember that you have deliberately put this aside. Kendal’s love is not made to affect his life, his character, his work. Miss Bretherton only feels so far attracted to him as to listen to what he says.... I only say this to show you what the book made me think, that you wrote as a critic not as a creator. You threw into the form of a story many critical judgments, and gave an excellent sketch of thepossible worth of criticism in an unregenerate world. This was worth doing once: but if you are going on with novels you must throw criticism to the winds and let yourself go as a partner of common joys, common sorrows and common perplexities. There, I have told you what I think just as I think it. I would not have done so to anyone else save you, to whom I am always,
Your most affectionate,M. CREIGHTON.
No doubt Mrs. Ward stored up this criticism for future use, for when she next embarked upon a novel the canvas was indeed broad enough.
They had not been settled in London for much more than a year before Mrs. Ward began to feel the need for some quiet and remote country place to which she might fly for peace and work when the strain of London became too great. Fortune favoured the quest, for in the summer of 1882 they took the rectory at Peper Harow, near Godalming (the “Murewell Rectory” ofRobert Elsmere), for a few weeks, and during that time were taken by Lord Midleton, the owner of Peper Harow, to see a delightful old farm in the heart of the lonely stretch of country that lies between the Portsmouth Road and Elstead. They fell in love with it at once, and during the following winter made an arrangement to take its six or seven front rooms by the year. So from the summer of 1883 onwards they possessed Borough Farm as a refuge and solace in the wilds, a paradise for elders and children alike, where London and its turmoil could be cast off and forgotten. It lay in a country of heather commons, woods, rough meadows, streams and lakes—those “Hammer Ponds” which remain as a relic of the iron-smelting days of Surrey, and in which we children amused ourselves by the hour in fishing for perch with a bent pin and a worm. Here Mrs. Ward would lie out whenever the sun shone in the old sand-pit up the lane, where we had constructed a sort of terrace for her long chair, or else under the ash-tree on the little hill, writing or reading, while no sound came save the murmur of wind in the gorse, or in the dry bells of the heather. If her physique had been stronger she would, perhaps, have been too much tempted by the beauty of the country ever to havelain still and worked for so many hours as she did in that long chair; but she was never robust, she was extremely susceptible to bad weather, cold winds and every form of chill, and her longest expeditions were those which she took in a little pony-carriage over Ryal or Bagmoor Commons to Peper Harow, or up the Portsmouth Road to Thursley and Hindhead.
Here a few friends came at intervals to share the solitude with us: Laura Tennant, on a wonderful day in May, 1884, when she seemed to her dazzled hostess the very incarnation of the spring; M. Edmond Scherer, her earliest French friend, who, in 1884, was helping her with her translation of Amiel’sJournal; Henry James, whose visit laid the foundation of a friendship that was to ripen into one of the most precious of all Mrs. Ward’s possessions; Mlle. Souvestre, foundress of the well-known girls’ school at Wimbledon, and one of the keenest intellects of her time; and once, for a whole fortnight, Miss Eugénie Sellers,[10]who had for many months been teaching the family their classics, and who now came down to superintend their Greek a little and to roam the commons with them much. It was in 1886, just before this visit, that Mrs. Ward began seriously to read Greek, usually with her ten-year-old son; she bought a Thucydides in Godalming one day and was delighted to find it easier than she expected. It was a passion that grew upon her with the years, as any reader of her later books will clearly perceive.
Then, though the solitude of the farm itself was profound, there were a few, a very few, neighbours in the more eligible districts round about who made it their pleasure sometimes to call upon us; there were the Frederic Harrisons at Elstead, whose four boys dared us children to horrid feats of jumping and climbing in the sand-pit, while our elders were safely engaged elsewhere; John Morley also, for a few weeks in 1886, and in the other direction Lord and Lady Wolseley, who took a house near Milford, and thence made their way occasionally down our sandy track. But the neighbours who meant most to us were, after all, our landlords, the Brodricks of Peper Harow; they were not only endlessly kind, giving us leave to disport ourselves in alltheir ponds, but took a sort of pride of possession, I believe, in their pocket authoress, watching her struggles and her achievement with paternal eyes. And whenRobert Elsmereat length appeared, old Lord Midleton, pillar of Church and State as he was, came riding over to the farm, sitting his horse squarely in spite of his white hairs and his semi-blindness, and sent in word that the “Wicked Squire” was at the gate!
Two letters written to her father from Borough Farm during these years, give glimpses of her browsings in many books, and of her thoughts on Shakespeare, evolution and kindred matters:
‘I have been reading Joubert’sPenséesandCorrespondancelately, with a view to the Amiel introduction. You would be charmed with the letters, and some of thepenséesare extraordinarily acute. Now I am deep in Sénancour, and for miscellaneous reading I have been getting through Horace’s Epistles and dawdling a good deal over Shakespeare. My feeling as to him gets stronger and stronger, that he was, strictly speaking, a great poet, but not a great dramatist! There’s a remark over which I trust you will draw a fatherly veil! But one can only say what one feels, and I am more oppressed than I used to be by his faults of construction, his carelessness, his excrescences, while at the same time much more sensitive to his preternatural power as a poet and as a psychological analyst. He gets at the root of his characters in a marvellous way, he envisages them separately as no one else can, but it is when he comes to bring them into action to represent the play of outward circumstance and the interaction of character on character that he seems to me comparatively—only comparatively, of course—to fail. I have always felt it most strongly in Othello, and of course in the last act of Hamlet, which, in spite of the magnificent poetry in it, is surely a piece of dramatic bungling....‘As to Renan it would be too long to argue it, but I think he very much saves himself in the passage you quote by the qualifying word ‘comme.’ The Church is ‘as it were’un débris de l’Empire. It is only another way of putting what Harnack said in that article you and I read at Sea View. ‘The Empire built up the Church out of its own substance, and destroyed itself in so doing,’ or words to thateffect. I cannot help feeling that as far as organization and institutions go it is very true, though I would never deny that God was in the Church, as I believe He is in all human society, moulding it to His will. Everything, from the critical and scientific standpoint, seems to me so continuous and natural—no sharp lines anywhere—one thing leading to another, event leading to event, belief to belief—and God enwrapping and enfolding all. But this is one general principle, and yours is quite another. I quite agree that from your standpoint no explanation that Renan could give of the Church can appear other than meagre or grotesque.”
‘I have been reading Joubert’sPenséesandCorrespondancelately, with a view to the Amiel introduction. You would be charmed with the letters, and some of thepenséesare extraordinarily acute. Now I am deep in Sénancour, and for miscellaneous reading I have been getting through Horace’s Epistles and dawdling a good deal over Shakespeare. My feeling as to him gets stronger and stronger, that he was, strictly speaking, a great poet, but not a great dramatist! There’s a remark over which I trust you will draw a fatherly veil! But one can only say what one feels, and I am more oppressed than I used to be by his faults of construction, his carelessness, his excrescences, while at the same time much more sensitive to his preternatural power as a poet and as a psychological analyst. He gets at the root of his characters in a marvellous way, he envisages them separately as no one else can, but it is when he comes to bring them into action to represent the play of outward circumstance and the interaction of character on character that he seems to me comparatively—only comparatively, of course—to fail. I have always felt it most strongly in Othello, and of course in the last act of Hamlet, which, in spite of the magnificent poetry in it, is surely a piece of dramatic bungling....
‘As to Renan it would be too long to argue it, but I think he very much saves himself in the passage you quote by the qualifying word ‘comme.’ The Church is ‘as it were’un débris de l’Empire. It is only another way of putting what Harnack said in that article you and I read at Sea View. ‘The Empire built up the Church out of its own substance, and destroyed itself in so doing,’ or words to thateffect. I cannot help feeling that as far as organization and institutions go it is very true, though I would never deny that God was in the Church, as I believe He is in all human society, moulding it to His will. Everything, from the critical and scientific standpoint, seems to me so continuous and natural—no sharp lines anywhere—one thing leading to another, event leading to event, belief to belief—and God enwrapping and enfolding all. But this is one general principle, and yours is quite another. I quite agree that from your standpoint no explanation that Renan could give of the Church can appear other than meagre or grotesque.”
Her translation of Amiel’sJournal Intimewas a long and exacting piece of work, but she enjoyed the struggle with the precise meaning of the French phrases and always maintained that she owed much to it, both in her knowledge of French and of English. She had begun it, with the benevolent approval of its French editor, M. Scherer, early in 1884, and took it up again afterMiss Brethertoncame out; found it indeed a far more troublesome task than she had foreseen, and was still wrestling with the Introduction in the summer of 1885, when her head was already full of her new novel, and she was fretting to begin upon it. But the book appeared at length in December, 1885, and very soon made its mark. The wonderful language of the Swiss mystic appealed to a generation more occupied than ours with the things of the soul, while Mrs. Ward’s introduction gave a masterly sketch of the writer’s strange personality and the development of his mind. As Jowett wrote to her, “Shall I tell you the simple truth? It is wonderful to me how you could have thought and known so much about so many things.” Mr. Talbot, the Warden of Keble (now Bishop of Winchester), wrote of the “almost breathless admiration of the truth and penetration of his thought” with which he had read the book, while Lord Arthur Russell reported that he had “met Mr. Gladstone, who spoke with great interest of Amiel, asked me whether I had compared the translation with the original, and said that a most interesting small volume might be extracted, ofPensées, quite equal to Pascal.”
But it was, inevitably, “caviar to the general.” Mrs. Ward’s brother, Willie Arnold, her close comrade andfriend in all things literary, wrote to her from Manchester a few months after its appearance: “I served on a jury at the Assizes last week—two murder cases and general horrors. I sat next to a Mr. Amiel—pronounced ‘Aymiell’—a worthy Manchester tradesman; no doubt his ancestor was a Huguenot refugee. I had one of your vols. in my pocket, and showed him the passage about the family. He was greatly interested, and borrowed it. Returned it next day with the remark that it was ‘too religious for him.’ Alas, divine philosophy!”
Ever since the previous winter the idea of a novel in which the clash between the older and the younger types of Christianity should be worked out in terms of human life, had been growing and fermenting in her mind.Miss Brethertonand Amiel’sJournalhad given her a valuable apprenticeship in the art of writing, while Amiel’s luminous reflections on the decadence and formalism of the churches had tended to confirm her own passionate conviction that all was not well with the established forms of religion. But the determining factor in the writing ofRobert Elsmerewas the close and continuous study which she had given ever since her work for theDictionary of Christian Biographyto the problem of “Christian origins.” She was fascinated by the intricacy and difficulty of the whole subject, but more especially by such branches of it as the Synoptic Problem, or the relation of the Fourth Gospel to the rest; while the questions raised by the realization that the Books of the New Testament were the products of an age steeped in miracle and wholly uncritical of the records of it, struck her as vital to the whole orthodox position. At the same time her immense tenderness for Christianity, her belief that the life and teaching of the Founder were still the “master-light of all our seeing,” made her yearn for a simplification of the creeds, so that the Message itself should once more appeal to the masses without the intervention of formulæ that perpetually challenged their reason. The argument of “Literature and Dogma” culminates in the picture of mankind waiting for the lifting of the burden of “Aberglaube” and dogmatism, with which the spirit of Christianity had been crushed down for centuries, waiting for the renewal that would come when the old coil was cast off.It was in that spirit also that Mrs. Ward attacked the problem; her Robert was to her a link in the chain of the liberators of all ages. Was her outlook too intellectual? Did she overestimate the repugnance to obsolete forms that possessed her generation? So it was said by many who rose up in startled defence of those forms, many who had never felt the uttermost clash between the things which they wished to believe and the things which Truth allowed them to believe. Yet still the response of her generation was to be greater than she ever dreamt. No doubt the renewal did not come in the precise form in which she looked for it; creeds were to prove tougher, the worship of the Risen Lord more vital than she thought; yet still, in a hundred ways, the influence of the fermentation caused by the ideas ofRobert Elsmeremay be traced in the Church to-day. “Biblical criticism” may now be out of fashion; but it is because its victory has in reality been won. All this lay hidden from the mind of the writer as she sat toiling over her task in the solitude of Borough Farm, or in the little “powder-closet” overlooking the back gardens of Russell Square; she wrote because she “could no other,” and only rarely did she allow herself to feel, with trembling, that theZeitgeistmight indeed be with her.
The book was begun in the autumn of 1885, with every hope that it would be finished in less than a year. It was offered, when a few chapters had been written, to the Macmillans for publication, since they had published bothMiss Brethertonand theEnglish Poets, but to the sad disappointment of its author they rejected it on the ground that the subject was not likely to appeal to the British public. In this dilemma Mrs. Ward bethought herself of Mr. George Murray Smith, the publisher of Charlotte Brontë, and in some trepidation offered the book to him. Mr. Smith had greater faith than the Macmillans and accepted it at once, sealing the bargain by making an advance of £200 upon it in May, 1886. So began Mrs. Ward’s connection with “George Smith,” as she always familiarly spoke of him: a friend and counsellor indeed, to whom she owed incalculable things in the years that followed.
In the Preface to the “Westmorland Edition” ofRobert Elsmere, issued twenty-three years later, Mrs. Ward herself confessed to her models for some of the principalcharacters—to the friend of her youth, Mark Pattison, for the figure of the Squire (though not in his landowning capacity!); to Thomas Hill Green, “the noblest and most persuasive master of philosophic thought in modern Oxford,” for that of Henry Grey; and to Amiel himself, the hapless intellectual tortured by the paralysis of will, for that of Langham. Both the Rector of Lincoln and Professor Green had recently died, the latter in the prime of his life and work, and Mrs. Ward sought both in the dedication and in her sketch of the strong and lovable tutor of St. Anselm’s, to express her lasting admiration for this lost friend. But she claimed in each case the artist’s freedom to treat her creatures as her own, once they had entered the little world of the novel: a thesis which she was to maintain and develop in later years, when she occasionally went to the past for her characters. Catherine was a more composite picture, drawn from the “strong souls” she had known among her own kinswomen from childhood up, and therefore, perhaps, more tenderly treated by the author than the rules of artistic detachment would allow. She was a type far more possible in the ’eighties than now, but it is perhaps comforting to know that no single human being inspired her. As to the scene in which these figures moved, it was on a sunny day at the end of May, 1885, that Mrs. Ward’s old friend, Mr. James Cropper, of Ellergreen, took her for a drive up the valley of Long Sleddale, in a lonely part of Westmorland. There she saw the farm at the head of the dale, the vicarage, the Leyburns’ house. Already her thoughts were busy with her story, and from that day onwards she peopled the quiet valley with her folk.
At first she was full of hope that the book would be finished before the summer of 1886, although she admits to her mother that “it is very difficult to write and the further I get the harder it is.” In March of that year she writes to her sister-in-law: “I have made up my mind to come here [Borough Farm] for the whole of April, so as to getRobert Elsmere done! It must and shall be done by the end of April, if I expire in the attempt.” In April she did indeed work herself nearly to death, writing sixteen, eighteen and even twenty pages of manuscript in the day, and a sort of confidence began to grow up in her mind that the book would not speak its message in vain. “I think this bookmustinterest a certain number of people,” she writes to her mother; “I certainly feel as if I were writing parts of it with my heart’s blood.” But the difficulties only increased, and actually it was the end of October before even the first two volumes were finished. And then “the more satisfied I become with the second volume the more discontented I am with the first. It must be re-cast, alas!” Her arm was often troublesome, especially in the autumn of this year, when she was staying at the Forsters’ house near Fox How, working very hard. “I am dreadfully low about myself,” she writes; “my arm has not been so bad since April, when it took me practically a month’s rest to get it right again. I have been literally physically incapable of finishing my last chapter. And to think of all the things I promised myself to do this week! And here I have time, ideas, inclination, and I can do nothing. I will dictate if I can to Gertrude, but I am so discouraged just at present I seem to have no heart for it.” Then a few days later it has taken a turn for the better, and she is overjoyed: “The second volume wasfinishedlast night! The arm isdecidedlybetter, though still shaky. I sleep badly, and rheumatism keeps flying about me, now here, now there, but I am not at all doleful—indeed in excellent spirits now that the arm is better!”
So, in spite of the distractions of London, she struggled on with the third volume all through that winter (1886-7), flying for a week in December to Borough Farm in order to get complete isolation for her task. “Oh, the quiet, the blissful quiet of it! It helps me most in thinking out the book. I canwritein London; I seem to be unable to think.” Sometimes, however, her head was utterly exhausted. Returning to London, she wrote to her mother: “I did a splendid day’s work yesterday, but it was fighting against headache all day, and this morning I felt quite incapable of writing and have been lying down, reading, though my wretched head is hardly fit for reading. It is not exactly pain, but a horrid feeling of tension and exhaustion, as if one hadn’t slept for ever so long, which I don’t at all approve of.”
Often, when these fits of exhaustion came on, a small person would be sent for from the schoolroom, in whose finger-tips a quaint form of magic was believed to reside, and there shewould sit for an hour, stroking her mother’s head, or her hands, or her feet, while the “Jabberwock” on the Chinese cabinet curled his long tail at the pair in silence. “Chatter to me,” she used to say; but this was not always easy, and a golden and friendly silence, peopled by many thoughts, usually lay between the two.
At length, on March 9, 1887, the last words of the third volume were written, there in the little powder-closet behind the back drawing-room. But this did not mean the end. She was already painfully aware that the book was too long, and Mr. George Smith, best and truest of advisers, firmly indicated to her that the limits even of a three-volume novel had been overstepped. She herself had already admitted to her brother Willie that it was “not a novel at all,” and she now plunged bravely into the task of cutting and revision, fondly hoping that it would take her no more than a fortnight’s hard work. Instead it took her the best part of a year. Publication first in the summer season, then in the autumn, had to be given up, while her own fatigue increased so that sometimes for days together she could not touch the book. The few friends to whom she showed it were indeed encouraging, and her brother Willie was the first to prophesy that it would “make a great mark.” After reading the first volume he wrote to Mrs. Arnold, “You may look forward to finding yourself the mother of a famous woman!” But the mood of this year was one of depression, while Mrs. Arnold’s illness became an ever-increasing sorrow. In the Long Vacation Mrs. Ward took the empty Lady Margaret Hall, at Oxford, for a few weeks, in order to be near her mother—a step which brought her unexpectedly another pleasure. On the very day after they arrived she wrote: “I have had a great pleasure to-day, for at three o’clock arrived a note from Jowett saying that he was in Oxford for a day and would I come to tea? So I went down at five, stayed an hour, then he insisted on walking up here, and sat in the garden watching the children play tennis till about seven. Dear old man! I have the most lively and filial affection for him. We talked about all sorts of things—Cornwall, politics, St. Paul—and when I wanted to go he would not let me. I think he liked it, and certainly I did.”
Through the autumn and into the month of January,1888, she struggled with mountains of proofs, while Mr. Smith, though without much faith in the popular prospects of the book, was always “kind and indulgent,” as she gratefully testifies in theRecollections. At length, towards the end of January, she sent in the last batch, and on February 24 the book appeared.
Six weeks later, in the little house in Bradmore Road, which had witnessed so many years of suffering indomitably borne, Julia Arnold lay dying. Through pain and exhaustion unspeakable she had yet kept her intense interest in the human scene, and now the last pleasure which she enjoyed on earth was the news that reached her of the growing success of her daughter’s book. With a hand so weak that the pen kept falling from her fingers, she wrote her an account of the Oxford gossip on it; she asked her, with a flash of the old malice, to let her know at once should she hear what any of her aunts were saying. Alas, Julia knew better than anyone else on earth what the religious temperament of the Arnolds might mean; but before the answer came her poor tormented spirit was at rest for ever.
THREE volumes, printed as closely as were those ofRobert Elsmere, penetrated somewhat slowly among the fraternity of reviewers. TheScotsmanand theMorning Postwere the first to notice it on March 5, nine days after its appearance; theBritish Weeklywept over it on March 9; theAcademycompared it toAdam Bedeon the 17th; theManchester Guardiangave it two columns on the 21st; theSaturday“slated” it on the 24th; while Walter Pater’s article in the ChurchGuardianon the 28th, calling it a “chef d’œuvreof that kind of quiet evolution of character through circumstance, introduced into English literature by Miss Austen and carried to perfection in France by George Sand,” gave perhaps greater happiness to its author than any other review.The Timeswaited till April 7, being in no hurry to show favour to one connected with its staff, but when it came the review duly spoke ofRobertas “a clever attack upon revealed religion,” and all was well. By the end of March, however, the public interest in the book had begun in earnest; the first edition of 500 copies was exhausted and a second had appeared; this was sold out by the middle of April; a third appeared on April 19 and was gone within a week; a fourth followed in the same way. Matthew Arnold wrote from Wilton, the Pembrokes’ house, a week before his death (which occurred on April 15), that he found all the guests there reading or intending to read it, and added, “George Russell, who was staying at Aston Clinton with Gladstone, says it is all true about his interest in the book. He talked of it incessantly and said he thought he should review it for Knowles.”
As a matter of fact, Mr. Gladstone had already writtenthe first draft of his article and was corresponding with Lord Acton on the various points which he wished to raise or to drive home. His biographer hints that Acton’s replies were not too encouraging. But the old giant was not to be deterred. The book had moved him profoundly and he felt impelled to combat the all too dangerous conclusions to which it pointed. “Mamma and I,” he wrote to his daughter in March, “are each of us still separately engaged in a death-grapple withRobert Elsmere. I complained of some of the novels you gave me to read as too stiff, but they are nothing to this. It is wholly out of the common order. At present I regard with doubt and dread the idea of doing anything on it, but cannot yet be sure whether your observations will be verified or not. In any case it is a tremendous book.” And to Lord Acton he wrote: “It is not far from twice the length of an ordinary novel; and the labour and effort of reading it all, I should say, sixfold; while one could no more stop in it than in reading Thucydides.” Early in April he came to Oxford to stay with the Edward Talbots at Keble College, and hearing that Mrs. Ward was also there, watching over her dying mother, he expressed a desire to see her, and, if possible, to talk the book over with her. She came on the day after her mother’s death—April 8—towards evening, and waited for him alone in the Talbots’ drawing-room. That night she wrote down the following account of their conversation:
‘I arrived at Keble at 7.10. Gladstone was not in the drawing-room. I waited for about three minutes when I heard his slow step coming downstairs. He came in with a candle in his hand which he put out, then he came up most cordially and quickly. ‘Mrs. Ward—this is most good of you to come and see me! If you had not come, I should myself have ventured to call and ask after yourself and Mr. Arnold.’‘Then he sat down, he on a small uncomfortable chair, where he fidgeted greatly! He began to ask about Mamma. Had there been much suffering? Was death peaceful? I told him. He said that though he had seen many deaths, he had never seen any really peaceful. In all there had been much struggle. So much so that ‘I myself have conceived what I will not call a terrorof death, but a repugnance from the idea of death. It is the rending asunder of body and soul, the tearing apart of the two elements of our nature—for I hold the body to be an essential element as well as the soul, not a mere sheath or envelope.‘ He instanced the death of Sidney Herbert as an exception.Hehad said ‘can this indeed be dying?’—death had come so gently.‘Then after a pause he began to speak of the knowledge of Oxford shown byRobert Elsmere, and we went on to discuss the past and present state of Oxford. He mentioned it ‘as one of the few points on which, outside Home Rule, I disagree with Hutton,’[11]that Hutton had given it as his opinion that Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold had had more influence than any other men on modern Oxford. Newman’s influence had been supreme up to 1845—nothing since, and he gathered from Oxford men that Professor Jowett and Mr. Green had counted for much more than Matthew Arnold. M.A.’s had been an influence on the general public, not on the Universities. How Oxford had been torn and rent, what a ‘long agony of thought’ she had gone through! How different from Cambridge!‘Then we talked again of Newman, how he had possessed the place, his influence comparable only to that of Abelard on Paris—the flatness after he left. I quoted Burne-Jones on the subject. Then I spoke of Pattison’s autobiography as illustrating Newman’s hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison’s religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman. He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison’s last ‘Confession of Faith,’ which Mrs. Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no. Then he asked me whether I had pleasant remembrances of Pattison. I warmly said yes, and described how kind he had been to me as a girl. ‘Ah!’ he said—‘Church would never cast him off; and Church is almost the only person of whom he really speaks kindly in the Memoirs.’‘Then, from the state of Oxford, we passed to the state of the country during the last half-century. ‘It hasbeen awonderfulhalf-century! I often tell the young men who are coming on that we have had a better time than they can have, in the next half-century. Take one thing only—the abolition of slavery in the world (outside Africa I suppose he meant). You are too young to realize what that means. But I draw a distinction between the first twenty-five years of the period and the second; during the first, steady advance throughout all classes, during the second, distinct recession, and retrogression, in the highest class of all. That testing point,marriage, very disquieting. The scandals about marriage in the last twenty years unparallelled in the first half of the period. I don’t trust my own opinion, but I asked two of the keenest social observers, and two of the coolest heads I ever knew—Lord Granville and the late Lord Clanwilliam—to tell me what they thought and they strongly confirmed my impression.‘ (Here one of the Talbot boys came in and stood by the fire, and Gladstone glanced at him once or twice, as though conversation on these points was difficult while he was there.) I suggested that more was made of scandals nowadays by the newspapers. But he would not have it—‘When I was a boy—I left Eton in 1827—there were two papers, theAgeand theSatirist, worse than anything which exists now. But they died out about 1830, and for about forty years there wasnothing of the kind. Then sprang up this odious and deplorable crop of Society papers.’ He thought the fact significant.‘He talked of the modern girl. ‘They tell me she is not what she was—that she loves to be fast. I don’t know. All I can bear testimony to is the girl of my youth.Shewas excellent!’‘‘But,’ I asked him, ‘in spite of all drawbacks, do you not see a gradual growth and diffusion of earnestness, of the social passion during the whole period?’ He assented, and added, ‘With the decline of the Church and State spirit, with the slackening of State religion, there has unquestionably come about a quickening of the State conscience, of thesocialconscience. I will not say what inference should be drawn.’‘Then we spoke of charity in London, and of the way in which the rich districts had elbowed out their poor.And thereupon—perhaps through talk of themotivesfor charitable work—we came to religion. ‘I don’t believe in any new system,’ he said, smiling, and with reference toRobert Elsmere; ‘I cling to the old. The great traditions are what attract me. I believe in a degeneracy of man, in the Fall—insin—in the intensity and virulence of sin. No other religion but Christianity meets the sense of sin, and sin is the great fact in the world to me.’‘I suggested that though I did not wish for a moment to deny the existence of moral evil, the more one thought of it the more plain became its connection with physical and social and thereforeremovableconditions. He disagreed, saying that the worst forms of evil seemed to him to belong to the highest and most favoured class ‘ofeducatedpeople’—with some emphasis.‘I asked him whether it did not give him any confidence in ‘a new system’—i.e. a new construction of Christianity—to watch its effect on such a life as T. H. Green’s. He replied individuals were no test; one must take the broad mass. Some men were born ‘so that sin never came near them. Such men never felt the need of Christianity. They would be better if they were worse!’‘And as to difficulties, the great difficulties of all lay in the way of Theism. ‘I am surprised at men who don’t feel this—I am surprised at you!‘ he said, smiling. Newman had put these difficulties so powerfully in theApologia. The Christian system satisfied all the demands of the conscience; and as to the intellectual difficulties—well there we came to the question of miracles.‘Here he restated the old argument against ana prioriimpossibility of miracles. Granted a God, it is absurd to limit the scope and range of thewillof such a being. I agreed; then I asked him to let me tell him how I had approached the question—through a long immersion in documents of the early Church, in critical and historical questions connected with miracles. I had come to see how miracles arise, and to feel it impossible to draw the line with any rigidity between one miraculous story and another.‘‘The difficulty is’—he said slowly, ‘if you sweep away miracles, you sweep awaythe Resurrection! With regard to the other miracles, I no longer feel as I oncedid that they are the most essential evidence for Christianity. The evidence which now comesnearestto me is the evidence of Christian history, of the type of character Christianity has produced——‘“Here the Talbots’ supper bell rang, and the clock struck eight. He said in the most cordial way it was impossible it could be so late, that he must not put the Warden’s household out, but that our conversation could not end there, and would I come again? We settled 9.30 in the morning. He thanked me, came with me to the hall and bade me a most courteous and friendly good-bye.”[12]
‘I arrived at Keble at 7.10. Gladstone was not in the drawing-room. I waited for about three minutes when I heard his slow step coming downstairs. He came in with a candle in his hand which he put out, then he came up most cordially and quickly. ‘Mrs. Ward—this is most good of you to come and see me! If you had not come, I should myself have ventured to call and ask after yourself and Mr. Arnold.’
‘Then he sat down, he on a small uncomfortable chair, where he fidgeted greatly! He began to ask about Mamma. Had there been much suffering? Was death peaceful? I told him. He said that though he had seen many deaths, he had never seen any really peaceful. In all there had been much struggle. So much so that ‘I myself have conceived what I will not call a terrorof death, but a repugnance from the idea of death. It is the rending asunder of body and soul, the tearing apart of the two elements of our nature—for I hold the body to be an essential element as well as the soul, not a mere sheath or envelope.‘ He instanced the death of Sidney Herbert as an exception.Hehad said ‘can this indeed be dying?’—death had come so gently.
‘Then after a pause he began to speak of the knowledge of Oxford shown byRobert Elsmere, and we went on to discuss the past and present state of Oxford. He mentioned it ‘as one of the few points on which, outside Home Rule, I disagree with Hutton,’[11]that Hutton had given it as his opinion that Cardinal Newman and Matthew Arnold had had more influence than any other men on modern Oxford. Newman’s influence had been supreme up to 1845—nothing since, and he gathered from Oxford men that Professor Jowett and Mr. Green had counted for much more than Matthew Arnold. M.A.’s had been an influence on the general public, not on the Universities. How Oxford had been torn and rent, what a ‘long agony of thought’ she had gone through! How different from Cambridge!
‘Then we talked again of Newman, how he had possessed the place, his influence comparable only to that of Abelard on Paris—the flatness after he left. I quoted Burne-Jones on the subject. Then I spoke of Pattison’s autobiography as illustrating Newman’s hold. He agreed, but said that Pattison’s religious phase was so disagreeable and unattractive that it did small credit to Newman. He would much like to have seen more of the autobiography, but he understood that the personalities were too strong. I asked him if he had seen Pattison’s last ‘Confession of Faith,’ which Mrs. Pattison decided not to print, in MS. He said no. Then he asked me whether I had pleasant remembrances of Pattison. I warmly said yes, and described how kind he had been to me as a girl. ‘Ah!’ he said—‘Church would never cast him off; and Church is almost the only person of whom he really speaks kindly in the Memoirs.’
‘Then, from the state of Oxford, we passed to the state of the country during the last half-century. ‘It hasbeen awonderfulhalf-century! I often tell the young men who are coming on that we have had a better time than they can have, in the next half-century. Take one thing only—the abolition of slavery in the world (outside Africa I suppose he meant). You are too young to realize what that means. But I draw a distinction between the first twenty-five years of the period and the second; during the first, steady advance throughout all classes, during the second, distinct recession, and retrogression, in the highest class of all. That testing point,marriage, very disquieting. The scandals about marriage in the last twenty years unparallelled in the first half of the period. I don’t trust my own opinion, but I asked two of the keenest social observers, and two of the coolest heads I ever knew—Lord Granville and the late Lord Clanwilliam—to tell me what they thought and they strongly confirmed my impression.‘ (Here one of the Talbot boys came in and stood by the fire, and Gladstone glanced at him once or twice, as though conversation on these points was difficult while he was there.) I suggested that more was made of scandals nowadays by the newspapers. But he would not have it—‘When I was a boy—I left Eton in 1827—there were two papers, theAgeand theSatirist, worse than anything which exists now. But they died out about 1830, and for about forty years there wasnothing of the kind. Then sprang up this odious and deplorable crop of Society papers.’ He thought the fact significant.
‘He talked of the modern girl. ‘They tell me she is not what she was—that she loves to be fast. I don’t know. All I can bear testimony to is the girl of my youth.Shewas excellent!’
‘‘But,’ I asked him, ‘in spite of all drawbacks, do you not see a gradual growth and diffusion of earnestness, of the social passion during the whole period?’ He assented, and added, ‘With the decline of the Church and State spirit, with the slackening of State religion, there has unquestionably come about a quickening of the State conscience, of thesocialconscience. I will not say what inference should be drawn.’
‘Then we spoke of charity in London, and of the way in which the rich districts had elbowed out their poor.And thereupon—perhaps through talk of themotivesfor charitable work—we came to religion. ‘I don’t believe in any new system,’ he said, smiling, and with reference toRobert Elsmere; ‘I cling to the old. The great traditions are what attract me. I believe in a degeneracy of man, in the Fall—insin—in the intensity and virulence of sin. No other religion but Christianity meets the sense of sin, and sin is the great fact in the world to me.’
‘I suggested that though I did not wish for a moment to deny the existence of moral evil, the more one thought of it the more plain became its connection with physical and social and thereforeremovableconditions. He disagreed, saying that the worst forms of evil seemed to him to belong to the highest and most favoured class ‘ofeducatedpeople’—with some emphasis.
‘I asked him whether it did not give him any confidence in ‘a new system’—i.e. a new construction of Christianity—to watch its effect on such a life as T. H. Green’s. He replied individuals were no test; one must take the broad mass. Some men were born ‘so that sin never came near them. Such men never felt the need of Christianity. They would be better if they were worse!’
‘And as to difficulties, the great difficulties of all lay in the way of Theism. ‘I am surprised at men who don’t feel this—I am surprised at you!‘ he said, smiling. Newman had put these difficulties so powerfully in theApologia. The Christian system satisfied all the demands of the conscience; and as to the intellectual difficulties—well there we came to the question of miracles.
‘Here he restated the old argument against ana prioriimpossibility of miracles. Granted a God, it is absurd to limit the scope and range of thewillof such a being. I agreed; then I asked him to let me tell him how I had approached the question—through a long immersion in documents of the early Church, in critical and historical questions connected with miracles. I had come to see how miracles arise, and to feel it impossible to draw the line with any rigidity between one miraculous story and another.
‘‘The difficulty is’—he said slowly, ‘if you sweep away miracles, you sweep awaythe Resurrection! With regard to the other miracles, I no longer feel as I oncedid that they are the most essential evidence for Christianity. The evidence which now comesnearestto me is the evidence of Christian history, of the type of character Christianity has produced——‘
“Here the Talbots’ supper bell rang, and the clock struck eight. He said in the most cordial way it was impossible it could be so late, that he must not put the Warden’s household out, but that our conversation could not end there, and would I come again? We settled 9.30 in the morning. He thanked me, came with me to the hall and bade me a most courteous and friendly good-bye.”[12]
The next morning she duly presented herself after breakfast, and this time they got to grips far more thoroughly than before with the question of miracles and of New Testament criticism generally. In a letter to her husband (published in theRecollections) she calls it “a battle royal over the book and Christian evidences,” and describes how “at times he looked stern and angry and white to a degree, so that I wondered sometimes how I had the courage to go on—the drawn brows were so formidable!” But she stuck to her points and found, as she thought, that for all his versatility he was not really familiar with the literature of the subject, but took refuge instead in attacking her own Theistic position, divested as it was of supernatural Christianity. “I do not say or think you ‘attack’ Christianity,” he wrote to her two days later, “but in proposing a substitute for it, reached by reduction and negation, I think (forgive me) you are dreaming the most visionary of all human dreams.”
He enclosed a volume of hisGleanings, marking the article on “The Courses of Religious Thought.” Mrs. Ward replied to him as follows:—